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Uptown Barbershop Trending Topic: Infidelity

Before we get into this, it is a must I provide a little context. My barbershop is the quintessential Dominican barbershop. Tons of people, music blaring, barbers dancing as they perform their duties. In short, a hive of activity; in many ways it is a place where a party is taking place and they just happen to cut hair. This is the kind of barbershop where you may find yourself being served little plastic cups of sweet espresso while you wait for your cut, as a whole host of street peddlers enter and exit the establishment to hawk bootleg DVD’s, clothes, sunglasses, watches. Maybe even furniture. Another thing that takes place at my barbershop and others like it is conversation. Straight up, loud, unfiltered, non-politically correct, sometimes anachronistic, man talk.

Photo Credit: Briana E. Heard

The topic on this particular outing was infidelity. For the most part, the general consensus among the barbers and the clientele was that women by nature will eventually cheat on their mates, so in order to mitigate the hurt from that inevitable occurrence, it was better to cheat before she does. In other words, pre-emptive cheating; cheat before getting cheated on. That way when the fateful day came, and everyone here was sure it would come; one could at least keep their head held high with the knowledge that they had their fair share of trysts, two-timing, affairs and adventures.

In my humble opinion, pre-emptive cheating like pre-emptive war is a recipe for a disaster but I was not going to voice my opinion and try to convert the convinced. Besides, it was much more fun to listen to the conversation, then to be shouted down for my ignorance. Anyway, there was an almost religious-like certainty to the whole thing. One dude even cited Eve as evidence that women were inherently deceitful and therefore untrustworthy. My man went back to Genesis to try to justify his argument. To me, it was quite comical the lengths that these men went to rationalize their philandering ways.

Another thing not considered was that maybe some of the women cheated in response to being cheated on, which would make it, retributive cheating. But in any case, whether it’s pre-emptive cheating or retributive cheating, it is still, at the end of the day, cheating, no excuses, explanations or justifications needed.